The 8 Best Origin Stories In Superhero Movies

3) Superman

You can’t go wrong with the very first superhero origin movie of them all. As the tagline famously said, ‘you’ll believe a man can fly,’ and we did thanks to the well-handled treatment of Superman’s busy backstory in the 1978 classic. It didn’t go for realism like certain other Man of Steel films, but it told its mythic story with a suitable grand and sweeping nature.

Even more so than more movies, Superman is split into three distinct acts – the destruction of Krypton, Clark’s time in Smallville and finally his burgeoning career as Superman in Metropolis. It still manages to be a cohesive whole, however, thanks to the classic arc of the hero’s journey that is woven through all three. While Clark could do nothing to save his home planet or his adoptive father before, by the end of the film he is able to turn back time and save Lois. By that moment, Superman – the hero who always finds another way – was properly born.